Rest in peace, Mr. Heston. He was in many good movies, as Zekester just posted.

He even had a cameo in one of Wayne's World movies, which was very funny.

He was more than just a great actor to me. He was a tireless activist for THE cause I hold closest to me by far -- gun rights. He did more for the NRA and the gun rights cause than anyone had since the founders themselves. It was his leadership in large part that helped change the tides of public sentiment in favor of preserving our Second Amendment freedoms.

Winning the Cultural WarCharlton Heston's Speech to the Harvard Law School ForumFeb 16, 1999

Quote

I remember my son when he was 5, explaining to his kindergarten class what his father did for a living. "My Daddy," he said, "pretends to be people." There have been quite a few of them. Prophets from the Old and New Testaments, a couple of Christian saints, generals of various nationalities and different centuries, several kings, three American presidents, a French cardinal and two geniuses, including Michelangelo.

If you want the ceiling re-painted I'll do my best. There always seem to be a lot of different fellows up here. I'm never sure which one of them gets to talk. Right now, I guess I'm the guy.

As I pondered our visit tonight it struck me: if my Creator gave me the gift to connect you with the hearts and minds of those great men, then I want to use that same gift now to re-connect you with your own sense of liberty ... your own freedom of thought ... your own compass for what is right.

Dedicating the memorial at Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln said of America, "We are now engaged in a great Civil War, testing whether this nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure."

Those words are true again. I believe that we are again engaged in a great civil war, a cultural war that's about to hijack your birthright to think and say what resides in your heart. I fear you no longer trust the pulsing lifeblood of liberty inside you ... the stuff that made this country rise from wilderness into the miracle that it is. Let me back up. About a year ago I became president of the National Rifle Association, which protects the right to keep and bear arms. I ran for office, I was elected, and now I serve ... I serve as a moving target for the media who've called me everything from "ridiculous" and "duped" to a "brain-injured, senile, crazy old man." I know ... I'm pretty old ... but I sure thank the Lord ain't senile. As I have stood in the crosshairs of those who target Second Amendment freedoms, I've realized that firearms are not the only issue. No, it's much, much bigger than that. I've come to understand that a cultural war is raging across our land, in which, with Orwellian fervor, certain acceptable thoughts and speech are mandated.

For example, I marched for civil rights with Dr. King in 1963 -- long before Hollywood found it fashionable. But when I told an audience last year that white pride is just as valid as black pride or red pride or anyone else's pride, they called me a racist.

I've worked with brilliantly talented homosexuals all my life. But when I told an audience that gay rights should extend no further than your rights or my rights, I was called a homophobe.

I served in World War II against the Axis powers. But during a speech, when I drew an analogy between singling out innocent Jews and singling out innocent gun owners, I was called an anti-Semite.

Everyone I know knows I would never raise a closed fist against my country. But when I asked an audience to oppose this cultural persecution, I was compared to Timothy McVeigh.

From Time magazine to friends and colleagues, they're essentially saying, "Chuck, how dare you speak your mind. You are using language not authorized for public consumption!"

But I am not afraid. If Americans believed in political correctness, we'd still be King George's boys-subjects bound to the British crown.

In his book, "The End of Sanity," Martin Gross writes that "blatantly irrational behavior is rapidly being established as the norm in almost every area of human endeavor. There seem to be new customs, new rules, new anti-intellectual theories regularly foisted on us from every direction. Underneath, the nation is roiling. Americans know something, without a name is undermining the nation, turning the mind mushy when it comes to separating truth from falsehood and right from wrong. And they don't like it."

Let me read a few examples. At Antioch college in Ohio, young men seeking intimacy with a coed must get verbal permission at each step of the process from kissing to petting to final copulation ... all clearly spelled out in a printed college directive.

In New Jersey, despite the death of several patients nationwide who had been infected by dentists who had concealed their AIDS --- the state commissioner announced that health providers who are HIV-positive need not. .. need not ... tell their patients that they are infected.

At William and Mary, students tried to change the name of the school team "The Tribe" because it was supposedly insulting to local Indians, only to learn that authentic Virginia chiefs truly like the name.

In San Francisco, city fathers passed an ordinance protecting the rights of transvestites to cross-dress on the job, and for transsexuals to have separate toilet facilities while undergoing sex change surgery.

In New York City, kids who don't speak a word of Spanish have been placed in bilingual classes to learn their three R's in Spanish solely because their last names sound Hispanic.

At the University of Pennsylvania, in a state where thousands died at Gettysburg opposing slavery, the president of that college officially set up segregated dormitory space for black students.

Yeah, I know ... that's out of bounds now. Dr. King said "Negroes." Jimmy Baldwin and most of us on the March said "black." But it's a no-no now.

For me, hyphenated identities are awkward ... particularly "Native-American." I'm a Native American, for God's sake. I also happen to be a blood-initiated brother of the Miniconjou Sioux. On my wife's side, my grandson is a 13th-generation Native American ... with a capital letter on "American."

Finally, just last month ... David Howard, head of the Washington D.C. Office of Public Advocate, used the word "niggardly" while talking to colleagues about budgetary matters. Of course, 'niggardly' means stingy or scanty. But within days Howard was forced to publicly apologize and resign.

As columnist Tony Snow wrote: "David Howard got fired because some people in public employ were morons who (a) didn't know the meaning of 'niggardly,' (b) didn't know how to use a dictionary to discover the meaning, and (c) actually demanded that he apologize for their ignorance."

What does all of this mean? It means that telling us what to think has evolved into telling us what to say, so telling us what to do can't be far behind. Before you claim to be a champion of free thought, tell me: Why did political correctness originate on America's campuses? And why do you continue to tolerate it? Why do you, who're supposed to debate ideas, surrender to their suppression?

Let's be honest. Who here thinks your professors can say what they really believe? It scares me to death, and should scare you too, that the superstition of political correctness rules the halls of reason.

You are the best and the brightest. You, here in the fertile cradle of American academia, here in the castle of learning on the Charles River, you are the cream. But I submit that you, and your counterparts across the land, are the most socially conformed and politically silenced generation since Concord Bridge.

And as long as you validate that ... and abide it ... you are-by your grandfathers' standards-cowards. Here's another example. Right now at more than one major university, Second Amendment scholars and researchers are being told to shut up about their findings or they'll lose their jobs. Why? Because their research findings would undermine big-city mayor's pending lawsuits that seek to extort hundreds of millions of dollars from firearm manufacturers.

I don't care what you think about guns. But if you are not shocked at that, I am shocked at you. Who will guard the raw material of unfettered ideas, if not you? Who will defend the core value of academia, if you supposed soldiers of free thought and expression lay down your arms and plead, "Don't shoot me."

If you talk about race, it does not make you a racist. If you see distinctions between the genders, it does not make you a sexist. If you think critically about a denomination, it does not make you anti-religion. If you accept but don't celebrate homosexuality, it does not make you a homophobe.

Don't let America's universities continue to serve as incubators for this rampant epidemic of new McCarthyism. But what can you do? How can anyone prevail against such pervasive social subjugation?

The answer's been here all along. I learned it 36 years ago, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., standing with Dr. Martin Luther King and two hundred thousand people.

You simply ... disobey. Peaceably, yes. Respectfully, of course. Nonviolently, absolutely. But when told how to think or what to say or how to behave, we don't. We disobey social protocol that stifles and stigmatizes personal freedom.

I learned the awesome power of disobedience from Dr. King ... who learned it from Gandhi, and Thoreau and Jesus and every other great man who led those in the right against those with the might.

Disobedience is in our DNA. We feel innate kinship with that Disobedient spirit that tossed tea into Boston Harbor, that sent Thoreau to jail, that refused to sit in the back of the bus, that protested a war in Vietnam.

In that same spirit, I am asking you to disavow cultural correctness with massive disobedience of rogue authority, social directives and onerous law that weaken personal freedom.

But be careful ... it hurts. Disobedience demands that you put yourself at risk. Dr. King stood on lots of balconies. You must be willing to be humiliated ... to endure the modern-day equivalent of the police dogs at Montgomery and the water Cannons at Selma. You must be willing to experience discomfort. I'm not Complaining, but my own decades of social activism have taken their toll on me. Let me tell you a story.

A few years back I heard about a rapper named Ice-T who was selling a CD called "Cop Killer" celebrating ambushing and murdering police officers. It was being marketed by none other than Time/Warner, the biggest entertainment conglomerate in the world. Police across the country were outraged. Rightfully so-at least one had been murdered. But Time/Warner was stonewalling because the CD was a cash cow for them, and the media were tiptoeing around it because the rapper was black. I heard Time/Warner had a stockholders meeting scheduled in Beverly Hills. I owned some shares at the time, so I decided to attend.

What I did there was against the advice of my family and colleagues. I asked for the floor. To a hushed room of a thousand average American stockholders, I simply read the full lyrics of "Cop Killer" -- every vicious, vulgar, instructional word.

It got worse, a lot worse. I won't read the rest of it to you. But trust me, the room was a sea of shocked, frozen, blanched faces. The Time/Warner executives squirmed in their chairs and stared at their shoes. They hated me for that. Then I delivered another volley of sick lyric brimming with racist filth, where Ice-T fantasizes about sodomizing two 12-year old nieces of Al and Tipper Gore. "SHE PUSHED HER BUTT AGAINST MY ...."

Well, I won't do to you here what I did to them. Let's just say I left the room in echoing silence. When I read the lyrics to the waiting press corps, one of them said "We can't print that." "I know," I replied, "but Time/Warner Ěs selling it."

Two months later, Time/Warner terminated Ice-T's contract. I'll never be offered another film by Warners, or get a good review from Time magazine. But disobedience means you must be willing to act, not just talk.

When a mugger sues his elderly victim for defending herself ... jam the switchboard of the district attorney's office. When your university is pressured to lower standards until 80 percent of the students graduate with honors ... choke the halls of the board of regents. When an 8-year-old boy pecks a girl's cheek on the playground and gets hauled into court for sexual harassment ... march on that school and block its doorways. When someone you elected is seduced by political power and betrays you ... petition them, oust them, banish them. When Time magazine's cover portrays millennium nuts as deranged, crazy Christians holding a cross as it did last month ... boycott their magazine and the products it advertises.

So that this nation may long endure, I urge you to follow in the hallowed footsteps of the great disobediences of history that freed exiles, founded religions, defeated tyrants, and yes, in the hands of an aroused rabble in arms and a few great men, by God's grace, built this country.

Heston was actually a democrat who marked with MLK (and voted for JFK) before he got sucked into the reagan vortex. I don't know if his predilection for weaponry pre or post-dated that conversion, but I feel pretty confident in agreeing with Exodor's position.

The majority of the speech had absolutely nothing to do with gun rights. Nothing.

Actually, I read the whole thing - it's the usual bullshit about how Political Correctness is some left-wing conspiracy designed to crush and silence conservative opinions.

Heston's trying to argue that if you take an unpopular position that you risk being ostracized. An unpopular position such as, oh I dunno, heading an organization that has referred to federal agents as "jack booted thugs."

His death doesn't make his argument any less silly and his use of Dr. King to try to justify it any less obnoxious.

Actually, I think it displayed how hypocritical political correctness can be, especially when it comes to falsely labeling people who disagree with them...despite past whatever past experiences they might have had that clearly show the opposite. He encourages people to voice their opinions, even if they're different from the majority and face being shunned.

They guy even marched with King back when it wasn't a very acceptable thing and no doubt took some flak for it back then. I'd say he has the right to invoke his name every once in a while.

They guy even marched with King back when it wasn't a very acceptable thing and no doubt took some flak for it back then. I'd say he has the right to invoke his name every once in a while.

Yeah, right.

When Heston marched with King, he was a democrat, and, famously, supported the Gun Control Act of 1968. He renounced all of that long after King had died. So, I have a hard time believing that a guy who won the Nobel peace prize for the principles of non-violence would condone his memory being used in a speech justifying intolerance and, among other things, gun ownership.

"So that this nation may long endure, I urge you to follow in the hallowed footsteps of the great disobediences of history that freed exiles, founded religions, defeated tyrants, and yes, in the hands of an aroused rabble in arms and a few great men, by God's grace, built this country."

Nowhere in it does he say Dr. King advocates his stance on gun ownership.

They guy even marched with King back when it wasn't a very acceptable thing and no doubt took some flak for it back then. I'd say he has the right to invoke his name every once in a while.

Yeah, right.

When Heston marched with King, he was a democrat, and, famously, supported the Gun Control Act of 1968. He renounced all of that long after King had died. So, I have a hard time believing that a guy who won the Nobel peace prize for the principles of non-violence would condone his memory being used in a speech justifying intolerance and, among other things, gun ownership.

Gun ownership does not equal violence. You guys lost this cultural fight in the 90's. Please don't bring your fear and loathing of guns into this.

"So that this nation may long endure, I urge you to follow in the hallowed footsteps of the great disobediences of history that freed exiles, founded religions, defeated tyrants, and yes, in the hands of an aroused rabble in arms and a few great men, by God's grace, built this country."

Nowhere in it does he say Dr. King advocates his stance on gun ownership.

He mentions King repeatedly, citing "pervasive social subjugation" as a trigger for "massive disobedience of rogue authority, social directives and onerous law that weaken personal freedom." Of course, one of his most delightful examples of causes to support? All of the "second amendment researchers" who're apparently in danger of being fired from major universities.

Of course, he agitates in the speech against gay rights, which I would argue undercuts his cause of personal freedom. All gay couples want are the same rights enjoyed by the heterosexual couples. Let's contrast Heston's stance with a passage from Letter from a Birmingham Jail:

Quote from: Martin Luther King, Jr.

An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.

Many homosexuals are hugely talented artists and executives... also dear friends. I don't despise their lifestyle, though I don't share it," Heston stated. "As long as gay and lesbian Americans are as productive, law-abiding and private as the rest of us, I think America owes them absolute tolerance. It's the right thing to do.

But on the other hand," Heston continued. "I find my blood pressure rising when Clinton's cultural shock troops participate in homosexual-rights fund-raisers but boycott gun-rights fund-raisers... and then claim it's time to place homosexual men in tents with Boy Scouts, and suggest that sperm donor babies born into lesbian relationships are somehow better served and more loved.

Quit judging people by whether you liked their movies or not Daehawk. He was known for being quite the homophobe in his later years.

Many homosexuals are hugely talented artists and executives... also dear friends. I don't despise their lifestyle, though I don't share it," Heston stated. "As long as gay and lesbian Americans are as productive, law-abiding and private as the rest of us, I think America owes them absolute tolerance. It's the right thing to do.

But on the other hand," Heston continued. "I find my blood pressure rising when Clinton's cultural shock troops participate in homosexual-rights fund-raisers but boycott gun-rights fund-raisers... and then claim it's time to place homosexual men in tents with Boy Scouts, and suggest that sperm donor babies born into lesbian relationships are somehow better served and more loved.

Quit judging people by whether you liked their movies or not Daehawk. He was known for being quite the homophobe in his later years.

I've worked with brilliantly talented homosexuals all my life. But when I told an audience that gay rights should extend no further than your rights or my rights, I was called a homophobe.

He seems to be arguing they should have everything non gays have and nothing more. They aren't special and neither are non gays.

A popular trope among those who oppose the Gay Rights movement is that because everyone, gay and straight, has the right to marry a member of the opposite sex, there is currently no discrimination at work. They argue that allowing homosexuals to marry would represent an "extra" right that straight people would not have.

In other words, when Heston says that "gay rights should extend no further than your rights or my rights," he's making an argument for why gay people should be forbidden from marrying each other -- it would be too discriminatory against straight people.

I think that the second paragraph pretty much screams homophobe, but if I am wrong I will take it back.

What he said was downright awful, but I'm not sure it reflects his true feelings on homosexuals. I think it was a poorly-worded diatribe on the Clinton Administration's view of priorities (gun rights versus gay rights). He seemed to get into a bit of a rant there and just flew off the deep end. However, it's quite possible that he resented what he believed was a lack of emphasis on gun rights and started to harbor some resentment. Now if there are other comments that are along these lines, then I'd label him a homophobe. But if this is it, then I'd just say he got sideways during a rant.

Usually, if someone is really a racist, they'll have a number of comments to use as examples (example: Bobby Fischer).

I'd agree with most of Heston's views on gun rights, though I don't see where a waiting period, nor licensing and registration violates the 2nd Amendment. It still gives the individual the right to "keep and bear arms". But he was useful in promoting the 2nd and helping to prevent a further erosion of our civil liberties.

You know, I posted this in Off-Topic -- without a word about Mr. Heston's disgusting anti-gay bigotry or other battiness, just a gentle rib on his oft-quoted statement -- and not in the political forum, for a reason.

How about we keep this thread where it should be... making fun of his lightheartedly mockable statements and lousy movies, and move the discussion about his copious deficiencies as a political philosopher to the proper forum?

You know, I posted this in Off-Topic -- without a word about Mr. Heston's disgusting anti-gay bigotry or other battiness, just a gentle rib on his oft-quoted statement -- and not in the political forum, for a reason.

How about we keep this thread where it should be... making fun of his lightheartedly mockable statements and lousy movies, and move the discussion about his copious deficiencies as a political philosopher to the proper forum?

Alas, too late. This thread is already too polluted with R&P stuff. If someone wants to open a politics-free posting in Off-Topic then that's fine.

I have no preconcieved notions of the man; other than Planet of the Apes I've never watched his other movies (that I can recall).

After reading his speech, and even the quotes people have dropped, I see that he does have a gun rights bias, but by no means does he seem to be an extremist, or a homophobe.

I want my rights to be equal to that of everyone else in my country; someone elses race or sexual preference should put them no further, or back, in the line.

I don't think Boy Scouts need to be recruited by the NRA any more than the Gay advocates, or even car manufacturers. I think that was the point he was making with that last comment that has people bothered.

Oh, and there is only one person who can validate whether or not King would have agreed with his speech, and that man is now capable of asking him.

RIP, Charles.

(Oh, and I don't own guns and I don't like guns. That being said, I don't see anything wrong with responsible gun ownership.)

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